The Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident - The Tragedy of Mission 51-L in 1986 - Volume 4 Hearings (February 6 - 25, 1986)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), World Spaceflight News, Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, Rogers Commission
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Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
June 6th, 1986
Washington, D.C.
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IN MEMORIAM
"The future is not free: the story of all human progress is one of a struggle against all odds. We learned again that this America, which Abraham Lincoln called the last, best hope of man on Earth, was built on heroism and noble sacrifice. It was built by men and women like our seven star voyagers, who answered a call beyond duty, who gave more than was expected or required and who gave it little thought of worldly reward."
President Ronald Reagan * January 31, 1986
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Francis R. (Dick) Scobee - Commander
Michael John Smith - Pilot
Ellison S. Onizuka - Mission Specialist One
Judith Arlene Resnik - Mission Specialist Two
Ronald Erwin McNair - Mission Specialist Three
S. Christa McAuliffe - Payload Specialist One
Gregory Bruce Jarvis - Payload Specialist Two
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Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident - Volume 4 - Hearings of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident: February 6, 1986 to February 25, 1986
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SECTION 1 * FEBRUARY 6, 1986 SESSION
SECTION 2 * FEBRUARY 6, 1986 SESSION PART TWO
SECTION 3 * FEBRUARY 7, 1986 SESSION
SECTION 4 * FEBRUARY 10, 1986 SESSION
SECTION 5 * FEBRUARY 11, 1986 SESSION
SECTION 6 * FEBRUARY 13, 1986 SESSION (Part 1 of 2)
SECTION 7 * FEBRUARY 13, 1986 SESSION (part 2 of 2)
SECTION 8 * FEBRUARY 14, 1986 SESSION
SECTION 9 *FEBRUARY 25, 1986 SESSION
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William R. Graham.
Jesse W. Moore.
Arnold A. Aldrich.
Judson A. Lovingood.
Robert Sieck.
Thomas L. Moser.
Richard H. Kohrs.
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PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON SPACE SHUTTLE CHALLENGER ACCIDENT-THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6,1986
National Academy of Sciences
Auditorium
2100 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
The Presidential Commission met, pursuant to Presidential Executive Order, at 9:50 o'clock a.m.
PRESENT:
WILLIAM P. ROGERS, Chairman
NEIL A. ARMSTRONG
DR. SALLY RIDE
DR. ALBERT WHEELON
ROBERT RUMMEL
DR. ARTHUR WALKER
RICHARD FEYNMAN
ROBERT HOTZ
DAVID C. ACHESON
MAJOR GENERAL DONALD KUTYNA
PROCEEDINGS
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Ladies and gentlemen, I now would like to call this first meeting of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident to order.
I want to make just a couple of preliminary remarks. As you know, this Commission was appointed by the President on Monday, and because of the time frame within which we are working, we wanted to start as expeditiously as possible, and the members of the Commission have been very accommodating and agreed to come to Washington yesterday.
We had a preliminary get-together to discuss our plans and where we were to go based upon the Executive Order, and we have, with the cooperation of NASA and the White House and other officials, been able to set up this meeting for this morning. The purpose of the meeting this morning is to be brought up to date on the events that have occurred since the accident, principally by officials from NASA. They have been very cooperative and have been working closely with us, and we are obviously going to rely in large part on the investigations that they have conducted and will conduct in the future.
On the other hand, as we said when the President announced the appointment of the Commission, we have our own responsibilities. We can seek other evidence, get any other information we may desire, and the NASA officials have been, as I say, very cooperative in that respect.
I would like to, by way of a beginning, refer to the Executive Order that created the Commission because we want to stick very closely to the instructions that we received from the President, and I will just read briefly the important part of that Executive Order.
It says "The Commission shall investigate the accident of the Space Shuttle Challenger which occurred on January 28, 1986, and the Commission shall:
"(1) Review the circumstances surrounding the accident to establish the probable cause or causes of the accident; and
"(2) Develop recommendations for corrective or other action based upon the Commission's findings and determinations.
"The Commission shall submit its final report to the President and to the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration within 120 days of the date of this Order."
So our first task, it seems to me, and I think other members of the Commission, is to deal with, one, review the circumstances surrounding the accident to establish the probable cause or causes of the accident.
Now, with that opening statement, keeping in mind that is our purpose this morning, to be brought up to date on the events that have occurred since the accident, we will call on NASA officials, and I guess the first witness is Dr. Graham, if the doctor will proceed to the podium.
Doctor, I will ask the Clerk to swear you in.
THE CLERK: Do you swear the testimony you are about to give before this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
DR. GRAHAM: I do.
TESTIMONY OF DR. WILLIAM R. GRAHAM, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL
AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
DR. GRAHAM: Mr. Chairman, members of the President's Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, NASA welcomes your role in considering and reviewing the facts and circumstances surrounding the accident of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
NASA continues to analyze the system design and data and, as we do, you can be certain that NASA will provide you with its complete and total cooperation. Along with the President, I look forward to receiving your report and to the resumption of space flight with our national Space Shuttle System.
I would like to introduce now Mr. Jesse Moore, who is NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Flight and also the Chairman of NASA's 51-L Data Design and Analysis Test Task Force. He will conduct the briefing.
Thank you.
THE CLERK: Do you swear the testimony you will give before this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
MR. MOORE: I do.
TESTIMONY OF JESSE W. MOORE, ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR SPACE FLIGHT, NATIONAL AERONAUTICAL AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION, AND CHAIRMAN, 51-L DATA DESIGN ANALYSIS TEST TASK FORCE
MR. MOORE: Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, we are here today before you to discuss the Space Shuttle Challenger accident and to talk to you about where we stand today in terms of our analysis that we have done so far as a result of that accident, and supporting me here today are various members of the NASA centers involved, as well as members of the Astronaut Office down at the Johnson Space Center.
I would like to say that we tried, in preparing this document for you, to put it together to give you a sequence of how NASA goes about getting ready for a flight, what some of the background associated with the Space Shuttle System is, and then, finally, tell you where we are with respect to the overall investigation that we are currently working on right now.
We will have to apologize because we probably have some acronyms in our document here that may be kind of difficult. Some of the charts that may come on the television screens may be difficult to read, but we have tried to put together the best set of information we could in the time available to do it.
I would like to now proceed with the agenda, please.
I plan to cover the overview, and then I would ask various members involved in the Space Shuttle System to cover respective parts of the Shuttle, and I will start out by asking Arnold Aldrich, who is the Manager of the National Space Transportation Program Office at the Johnson Space Center to talk about the orbiter system as well as to give you some background on the Shuttle and overall performance, and then I will call upon Dr. Judson A. Lovingood of the Marshall Space Flight Center to talk to you about the responsibilities of the systems that the Marshall Shuttle Projects Office have, and then I will ask Robert Sieck of the Kennedy Space Center to talk to you about the launch and landing operations at Kennedy.
I think what is also very important to this group is the design and development process that NASA follows in acquiring hardware and software before we fly it, and we will tell you about how we do that and the overall process, preparations with respect to that aspect.
Finally, we will close with our actual flight preparation process: How do we get ready for a flight; who is involved in getting ready for a flight, and to try to give you some background information about the overall flight process involved in the Space Shuttle Program.
The next chart shows an organization chart showing how NASA is organized from the Administrator level down to what we call the field center level, and I won't spend a lot of time going into great detail on this, but I will tell you that Dr. Graham is the Acting Administrator of NASA. I report directly to Dr. Graham. I am the Associate Administrator for Space Flight. And then reporting to me institutionally are four NASA centers involved in not only the Space Shuttle program but a number of other programs in NASA. The centers are the Lyndon B. Johnson Center in Houston, Texas. They are also the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and the National Space Technology Labs in Mississippi.
MR. MOORE: The next chart, please, will show a little bit more detail in terms of how I operate the Office of Space Flight. And in this chart I have four principal positions in my front office: a Deputy position; a Deputy Associate Administrator for Technical Matters; and a Deputy Associate Administrator for Management. I have two staff functions, principal staff functions. One is looking at STS program integration, looking and making sure all elements of the program are integrated from a standpoint of program, policy and budget. Then I have a number of what I call line divisions that report to me that have various responsibilities which are listed on the chart, and I will just quickly try to let you have a feeling for what those are.
The box on the far left shows my Customer Services and Business Planning Division. That division principally interacts with the Shuttle customers to give them schedule information and planning information prior to our launches. Then I have a division called the STS, and here STS- you will see that quite a bit-stands for the Space Transportation System, Orbiter Division and Logistics Division. This division is responsible for the overall program aspects and policy aspects of the Shuttle Orbiter System, and the logistics to support the Shuttle Orbiter System, meaning all the hardware and the spares that we need to make sure the Shuttle flies.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: What does STS stand for again?
MR. MOORE: I'm sorry, STS, you will hear that term quite a bit, stands for the Space Transportation System, and that is another way we use of talking about Space Shuttle. It is the Space Transportation System. If you look at the Space Shuttle, you can see the Space Shuttle here, and different people look at it in different ways. And some say the Space Shuttle is the orbiter only, but the Space Transportation System involves more than just the orbiter. It involves the external tank, it involves the solid rocket boosters, and all the people, facilities that we have to support it. And that is kind of what we call in broad terms the Space Transportation System.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Thank you.
MR. MOORE: In addition to our Orbiter Division we have a Propulsion Division, and this principally is, from a program standpoint, a budget and policy standpoint, responsible for the propulsive elements on the Shuttle, and those elements include the Shuttle main engines, of which there are three, the external tank which provides the fuel for the main engines on the Shuttle, and then the solid rocket boosters which provides the - a major part of the thrust during the initial ascent phase of the launch.
And then I have an STS Operations Division. This is responsible for, again, program and policy and budget related to how we operate the Shuttle in our launch operations down at the Kennedy Space Center as well as in our flight operations activity that is involved and being performed at the Johnson Space Center.
There are other supporting divisions on the right-Resources, Advanced Programs, and Space Flight Development Systems. These are kind of supportive to the overall Space Transportation System, and then each of the centers listed below have various responsibilities.
And I think the next chart will kind of give you a feel for the overall management responsibilities.
MR. MOORE: You can see the Office of Space Flight kind of looked at from an overall management point of view and not so much from an institutional point of view. My office has responsibility for policy, advocacy of the program, budget and resources, marketing, and kind of ensuring that the overall corporate structure is maintained, and then external relations interfacing with the outside world as far as the overall Shuttle is concerned.
There is a Program Office at the Johnson Space Center called Level 2, and Arnold Aldrich, whom you will be hearing from in just a minute, is the manager of this overall office. His job is overall program management integration, which means making sure that the system all plays together, that everything is ready from a systems standpoint from an overall performance, that the hardware all matches and so forth. And then there is a customer service function down at the Level 2 office as well to make sure the cargo integration and work in that area is also done appropriately.
Then, reporting to the Level 2 program offices are various project elements at the four NASA centers that I talked to you about, and I will just quickly go through from left to right the various projects and the responsibilities for these projects are the responsibilities of, on the left, the Johnson Space Center has the responsibility for the Shuttle orbiter, for the orbiter crew equipment, meaning all the components and so forth necessary for the flight crew, and also the Astronaut Offices at the Johnson Space Center, for Flight Operations, meaning at liftoff, the flight of the Shuttle, and its orbital operations and its landing operations are basically the responsibility of the Johnson Space Center, and to actually do the payload integration, making sure that the hardware we fly in the Shuttle is properly integrated into the cargo bay prior to our launch.
The Kennedy Space Center on the next box has the responsibility for ground support equipment such as all the launch pads and all the launch facilities that are required to support the launch of a Shuttle. They have responsibility for actually launching the Shuttle, the launch operations complex at the Kennedy Center does the actual countdown and so forth prior to a launch. And then they also do the hardware payload processing prior to installing, and they actually install the payload elements into the bay of a Shuttle.
At Marshall Space Flight Center they have the responsibility for the Shuttle main engines, for the external tank, for the solid rocket booster, and for Spacelab, which is a cargo element that flies inside of the Shuttle.
As far as the NSTL-again, NSTL is National Space Technology Laboratories-they basically provide us test facilities for testing the Shuttle main engines.
Next chart.
MR. MOORE: The next chart I'm just going to quickly let you look at. I don't intend to brief this in detail. What I have tried to do in this chart, you will see it discussed later by Mr. Aldrich. What I have tried to do in this chart is to give you a more detailed vertical cut from the previous chart, and on the right of the chart some of the specific functions that are done by this particular structure.
MR. MOORE: Now, the next several charts will talk about the planned evolution of the Shuttle program, and this is a plan which encompasses the 1981 timeframe through the 1986 timeframe, and I will try to show to you and to your Commission what flights have been done and the kinds of things that have been done during that period of time on the various missions.
There was a phase in the program that initiated in the April 1981 timeframe and ended in late 1982 called the Orbital Flight Test Phase.
MR. MOORE: During this phase we flew four Shuttle missions, STS missions, and as a part of those flights, we flew instrumented pallets-a pallet is a cargo element that sits inside of the cargo bay-to try to get some feel for how we could accommodate payloads in the Shuttle. We flew the RMS, another acronym-and that stands for the Remote Manipulator System, and that is the Shuttle's arm which we now fly routinely on most flights. We did fly our DOD, or Department of Defense, payload on one of the early flights, and we began doing some experimental flying on pharmaceuticals, doing some early experiments to see how those experiments would react to zero gravity.
Beginning in STS 5, which occurred in late 1982--
MR. MOORE: - we began what we called the early payload capability demonstration phase, and we looked at and we did fly a large number of different kinds of payloads to give us a feel for the capabilities of the Shuttle with respect to accommodating a number of different kinds of payloads. COMSAT is short for communications satellites, and in addition to the communications satellites, we flew several upper stages during that period of time. One is the PAM, or Payload Assist Module.
Let me pause. I think we put an acronym listing in the back of your book here, and we are going to try to make that as complete as we can because we in this business do an awful lot of talking in acronyms, and I apologize for that, but there are a couple of sheets in the back of the book with acronyms. We will try to make that more complete as time goes on.
We also flew the IUS, the Inertial Upper Stage, and you should note that we had an Inertial Upper Stage on this particular mission, 51-L, and I will come back to that point later. We also flew Spacelabs, I talked about. We did an EVA, which is an extravehicular activity where a crewperson would go outside of the Shuttle, and we also did an MMU flight, or a Manned Maneuvering Unit flight, where we actually flew a powered system away from the Shuttle and returned back to the Shuttle.
We did rendezvous on orbit, we did satellite repair, we did-on the Solar Array, and we also did a refuelling demonstration on the program. Beyond that period of time we have entered into what we call the Payload Operational Phase where we have done satellite retrievals, where we have flown some DOD, additional DOD, Department of Defense payloads, and we have also done some salvage rescue operations in space with the rescue of the SYNCOM satellite last year.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Up to that point, had the military, DOD, been involved in these programs?
MR. MOORE: The DOD has been involved in the Space Transportation System from the outset. In fact, they are working the launch pad facilities and have the responsibility now for the launch pad system development and facility development out at the Vandenberg Air Force Base. And the DOD plays a very strong role in the Shuttle program as far as working with NASA. There is a lot of interaction back and forth between the Department of Defense and NASA. A large contingent of the Department of Defense people are at the Johnson Space Center working hand in hand with our people, and we have also flown several dedicated missions on the Shuttle with the Department of Defense payloads on it.
So yes, the answer to your question is they are involved.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Has the role of the DOD changed at any point during this program?
MR. MOORE: Not in the recent past, sir. The role, in fact, it has gotten stronger. As time has gone on, I would say the role of the DOD is getting stronger in terms of their planned utilization of the Shuttle. We have plans in the latter part of this decade, the early part of the 1990s, where the DOD would plan to use a full one-third of the Shuttle capabilities.
So I would say the role is getting stronger, and their commitment to the Vandenberg Air Force Base launch system out there which will give us polar orbit launch capability-we now can only launch from the Kennedy Space Center, and basically achieve inclinations around 28-1/2 degrees to about 57 degrees latitude. The launch facilities out on the west coast will now give us polar orbiting capability which the DOD is working on that facility development.
Now, in the system deployment phase, we are in the process of implementing our major elements of the system, and at the Kennedy Space Center we have been building Pad B, the Launch Pad B. Up until this last launch we had been launching off of Pad A, and this 51-L mission was our first launch off of Pad B. We had also been putting in place our second TDRS, which is our Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. That was a major cargo element on this flight, and the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System is intended to allow us to communicate almost continuously with satellites from the Shuttle to the ground as opposed to using a lot of ground stations and so forth that we have been using up until this time.
We have also been planning to fly, and we have not flown it yet, a filament-wound case, which is a graphite/epoxy case to replace the steel cases on the solid rocket boosters. And if I could take a second, I will show you what these are.
These are the solid rocket boosters. These are steel cases here, and we have had a program underway in development to replace the steel cases with a graphite/epoxy case called filament wound case. The objective of doing that is to achieve more payload performance. We can get about 5,000 pounds more payload into orbit by going to a composite structure versus steel, and you will hear more about that later on.
The Vandenberg launch site I mentioned to you earlier, the improved engine life, or CENTAUR, the improved engine life is on the Shuttle main engine. We have a concern in the program about lifetime associated with the Shuttle main engines, and we have been putting a lot of effort into trying to get ourselves into a position for improved lifetime. We are developing CENTAUR G prime which is an upper stage that fits into the Shuttle bay, and it was planned or is planned to be launched in-the first launch attempt was planned in the May timeframe of this year, to launch two planetary missions.
MR. MOORE: We are also planning this year to launch the third Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, again to give us the global coverage I talked about. Space Telescope is planned to be launched this year, a scientific payload. We are building the mobile launch platform, MLP-3, and the mobile platform is basically what our Shuttle System here rolls out to the launch pad on. You have seen the large crawler with the big system that the Shuttle is anchored on at the launch pad. That is called a mobile launch platform. We now have two of those in operation at the Kennedy Space Center, and we have been in the process of developing a third one at the Kennedy Space Center for operation sometime later this year.
CENTAUR G prime is another upper stage which is a derivative of the G prime system, and it has a little lower performance capability, and it is being principally developed not only for NASA missions but also for the Department of Defense missions. I should point out that CENTAUR development program is a joint responsibility of NASA and the Department of Defense, the Air Force in particular.
CSOC, the last one, is a Consolidated Space Operations Center which we are in the process of planning with the Department of Defense. It is the responsibility of the Department of Defense to develop this capability, and it would take over and develop and do some of the operations of the Shuttle from this particular capability in CSOC, and it is in the Colorado area, and it is planned to be operational in the early 1990s. So DOD would help us in the operations.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Would you mind giving us a little more information about Pad B and Pad A? You said Pad B was the first time you had used that?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: And were the differences between-I assume there are differences between Pad A and Pad B?
Can the Commission-will the Commission be given some information about the differences?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir. Pad A has been our primary launch platform in the Shuttle program up until this flight, this flight being the 25th flight of the Space Shuttle. Pad B is adjacent to Pad A by some few miles, and it is in design approximately identical to Pad A, and this launch, as I said, was the first launch attempt from Pad B.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: All before were from Pad A?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir.
Mr. Sieck, who will speak on the launch and landing operations at the Kennedy Space Center, can give you some additional information about Pad B this afternoon when he talks, and we will be happy to provide the Commission any additional data that you so desire regarding the similarities and differences between Pad A and Pad B.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Thank you very much.
MR. MOORE: The next several charts I won't spend a lot of time. I think they are mostly for your background, Mr. Chairman and Commission members.
MR. MOORE: These kind of plot as a function of time-and I apologize again for the line at the top. The chart did not come out very well, so you will have a hard time looking at the dates on this, but this chart basically was from the first launch of the Space Shuttle in April 1981 through the 1982 timeframe where we flew the STS-4.
The next chart-
MR. MOORE: - carries us into the latter part of 1983, and it shows the launches of STS-5 through STS-9, which is Spacelab. And there are a number of different kinds of payloads on here. Most of these payload names are satellites, communications satellites or other attached experiments like, for example, on STS-7, Palapa B-1 is an Indonesian satellite; SPAS-01 is a German payload structure and so forth, so to give you a little feel for those particular cargo elements.
DR. FEYNMAN: On the chart it says first flight of OV-99. Is that the Challenger?
MR. MOORE: Yes, OV-99 is Challenger. Let me just give you the numbers. OV-102 is Orbiter Columbia. That was the first orbiter built and flown. OV-99 is the Shuttle Orbiter Challenger. It is the second one delivered. OV-103 is Discovery, and it was the third one built and delivered. And OV-104 is Atlantis, and we just recently received that last year, as a matter of fact, and it has had its inaugural flight last year.
There is an orbiter called Enterprise which was a structural test orbiter, and it has now been turned over to the Air and Space Museum, and so we now have four flight-configured-had four flight-configured orbiters until the tragic mishap with Challenger.
Continuing on with the payload capabilities demonstration phase.
MR. MOORE: Through 1984 and early '85 we flew STS-41-B, 41-C, 41-D, 41-G and 51-A, and maybe I can spend a few seconds trying to give you a little bit of the sense of the nomenclature of the 41's: A's, B's and C's. And it is 41, the number four stands for the fiscal year of the flight. From October to September is the fiscal year, so it is scheduled in that period of time. One stands for the launch area we are using. One is the Kennedy Center Launch Area, and if we were launching out of Vandenberg that would be a two, and the As, Bs, Cs and Ds are kind of the sequences that we have planned the missions, although as things have occurred we have had to move a mission over another mission, and so you don't get exactly an alphabetized listing of the flights.
MR. MOORE: Our next chart here through the 1985 timeframe, and the early part of-well, I guess the next chart we will show you through the 1985, we flew STS-51-C, which was a dedicated Department of Defense mission, and we flew 51-D, 51-B, 51-G, F, and 51-I through the latter part of the 1985 timeframe. And as a matter of fact, 51-I, for a point of reference, I believe, was launched on November 27, in that timeframe, of 1985.
MR. MOORE: In the next chart, the 61-A, 51-J was another DOD dedicated flight. 61-A was a Spacelab flight. 61-B was, the payloads were the communications satellites, and then the last flight before 51-L that we flew was STS-61-C, and we flew that in early January, and it also had communications satellites on it, among other cargo elements.
And then the flight that we are here to discuss, the 51-L mission, the Challenger incident, was planned, was launched on the 28th of January. That kind of gives you, Mr. Chairman, an early overview of some of the flight history and some of the very top-level structure of how NASA is organized, and what we have done in the Shuttle program to now.
If it pleases you, I would like to proceed with the 51-L mission summary and talk to you a little bit about the events of the day during the launch, where we are in the investigation work that we have done to date, what teams we have formed, and where we plan to go from here.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Mr. Moore, let's see if any Commission members have any questions.
DR. WALKER: I had one question. Why is 51-L after some of the sixties?
MR. MOORE: It was originally scheduled to be in an alphabetized sequence, but because of some of the cargo changes and so forth, we moved that nomenclature into the next fiscal year, and we just held the nomenclature. Once you develop your documentation for a flight, it is awfully difficult several months before that time to go back and change all of your nomenclature. And so our principle is to hold the nomenclature, even though it may appear out of sequence in terms of the chronology of numbers and the alphabet.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: All 24 of these flights were without accident, or were there minor accidents, and if so, how many?
MR. MOORE: The 24 flights to date have been without any major accident at all. We have a category called anomalies during a flight, like we may lose a power element or we may have something look anomalous on a flight, but no major accident. We have had a launch that has shut down on the launch pad, which is called a launch abort. The system is designed so that if things are not right before the solid rocket boosters light off, it will automatically go into a shutdown sequence. We had an occurrence of that. We also had an occurrence of a main engine which was shut down during ascent prior to reaching orbit, but we did reach orbit successfully, and the system operated as it was supposed to operate.
There have been a number of electronic problems, like we have had some problems with computers on board not functioning properly, and we have had some problems with fuel cells, but there have been no major accidents in the Space Shuttle program to date up until this last flight.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Did you find that the performance improved with each launch or remained about the same?
MR. MOORE: I think our performance in terms of the liftoff performance and in terms of the orbital performance, we knew more about the envelope we were operating under, and we have been pretty accurately staying in that. And so I would say the performance has not by design drastically improved. I think we have been able to characterize the performance more as a function of our launch experience as opposed to it improving as a function of time.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: I assume that you have rather complete records of each one of these flights.
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir, we have. As you will hear during the day, Mr. Chairman, we do a complete, thorough documentation of each flight, getting ready to each flight, and as the Commission so desires, we will be more than happy to provide you with all of the information you need in those areas.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: And do those reports show whether one flight seemed to be more successful than another?
And I am directing my comment-did you find that the performance was improved with each flight or not? Were you more worried in later flights or about the same, based on experience?
MR. MOORE: I don't think that we have relaxed at all in the program, and I don't think we have been more worried about the performance. I think we have gotten probably more confidence as a function of our overall performance on these things, but some of the events that we talked about, like the engine shutdown on the launch pad, that certainly worried us about the main engines because you need them to get to orbit, and we put together extensive review teams to find out what we could do about the engines program, and we have done a lot of work on that, and you will hear some more about the engine activities.
But as a function of time, I think our performance has been better characterized in terms of understanding the Shuttle system from a total system point of view is the way I would describe it.
DR. WALKER: I have one other question.
When were the graphite/epoxy casings to be phased into the program?
MR. MOORE: They are scheduled to be flown on the initial Vandenberg launch site flight, which is now targeted for the middle of the summer. It is mid July at this point in time is the current plan. So we have not flown any elements of the filament wound case, the graphite/epoxy cases up until this point in time.
DR. WALKER: Once you use them, was the plan to abandon the steel casings?
MR. MOORE: No, it is not. We have a major question that the program is looking at right now, and we probably won't get any good data on that until later downstream, and our question, among others that is on the table about the graphite/epoxy cases today, is can we reuse them?
You know, we currently reuse the steel cases. The Shuttle returns, it has its engines on the back, the SRBs are returned. They have parachutes on them. We go back and retrieve the SRBs and go through a refurbishment cycle on them to reuse them. For the graphite/epoxy cases, we are doing some of our final testing at this point in time, and we are not sure whether or not we can reuse those filament-wound cases after we fly them and they come back and impact the ocean. We have not made a determination like that, so we are not planning to get out of the steel case SRB business at this point in time. We have a lot of additional work to go on the filament-wound cases.
MR. HOTZ: Mr. Moore, have you made any design changes in the steel casings of the SRBs since the beginning of the program?
MR. MOORE: I think there have been some very minor design changes in the SRB, and I think Mr. Judson Lovingood from the Marshall Space Flight Center will talk about that as he comes up here this afternoon or later on this morning. He will give you a detailed rundown of the chronology of the SRBs, the external tank and the main engines.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: How many times can you reuse the booster?
MR. MOORE: We have not set a real high use limit. We probably, I think-and Bill Lucas, maybe you can help me on this-20 times, Mr. Commissioner, is the current plan for the reuse of the steel cases on the SRBs.
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: What is the largest number of uses?
MR. MOORE: I think the largest-and again, I am recalling from memory-is about three to four times. This particular flight, 51-L, as I recall, had maximum of two uses of any of the components, possibly three, if my memory serves me correctly.
MR. SUTTER: I have one short question. The flights are characterized, the first flights were test flights to check the Shuttle system, and then the second phase was capabilities demo phase.
In the first flights which were labeled flight tests, was there a documentation of what was trying to be accomplished, what instrumentation was required, and then after those flights, was there a documentation of what the flights proved?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir. We have very, very extensive documentation on all those flights, what we learned from those flights and what were changed as we left from the orbital flight test phase into the other phases of the program. We maintain very, very extensive records of all the flights.
MR. SUTTER: And at the conclusion of those flights were the objectives pretty well achieved?
MR. MOORE: In general, I would say the objectives of those flights were met. Each flight data was analyzed in great detail and fed back in to the program designers to look at what they actually achieved versus what they expected. And again, we will be able-we will be happy to make available to the Commission any data that the Commission so desires relative to any of the flights up until now.
Now, if I might, Mr. Chairman, I would like to move into the 51-L mission which is the mission we are talking about, Challenger's tragic mission, and I would like to start out by giving you a very brief look at what the cargo elements were on board.
MR. MOORE: I have talked about these, but let me talk to you again quickly. The largest payload component on board, and I should point out that the shuttle cargo bay, you are going to hear more about the dimensional characteristics and performance characteristics of the shuttle, but I should point out that the shuttle cargo bay is 15 feet in diameter and 60 feet long, to give you some feel of the dimensionality of the cargo bay, and we have flown a maximum of eight people in the shuttle up until this point in time.
On this flight, we had the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. This was to be the second Tracking and Data Relay Satellite deployed. There is one on orbit now, and it was supported by an Inertial Upper Stage developed by the Air Force and used by NASA for the deployment of the satellite from low earth orbit where the shuttle takes you, up to the geosynchronous orbit where the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite has a requirement.
We also had on board a payload called Spartan-Halley. This was a structural element that actually sat across the shuttle bay attached to the cargo bay and supported several science instruments to do some observations of Comet Halley. And then we had in the crew compartment or the middeck area, we had the experiments associated with the Teacher-in-Space Program.
We had an experiment called CHAMP, Comet Halley Active Monitoring Program, a fluid dynamics experiment, some student experiments looking at different kinds of things from high school students, The Radiation Monitoring Experiment, and a Phase Partitioning Experiment.
Most of those sat in the middeck area of the orbiter, and you will hear some more about that particular area, and where the lockers are and so forth for putting those kinds of experiments. They are fairly small experiments.
MR. MOORE: The next chart shows the layout of the major elements of the cargo, and it showed the TDRS-B/IUS sitting in the cargo bay, the Spartan-Halley on the impasse, the support structure. It also shows on there an acronym which I talked about before called the RMS, which is the Remote Manipulator System. That is the arm on board.
The arm was planned to be used on this flight to pick the Spartan system up, deploy it overboard, leave it in orbit for a couple of days, rendezvous back with it, pick it up, and store it back into the cargo bay and return back to the earth.
GENERAL KUTYNA: Jess, may I ask, how many remote manipulator arms do you have? Is that the only one?
MR. MOORE: No, we have another arm, and also we have a program with the Canadians for possibly refurbishing another one.
DR. WALKER: Could you say a word about the IUS?
MR. MOORE: Yes. The IUS is a two-stage solid inertial upper stage. It is solid rockets, and the TDRS in this case, I believe, is 5,000 or 6,000 pounds, and its purpose was basically to boost it from low earth orbit, which was about 140 or 50 nautical miles up to its position in geostationary orbit, which is about 22,000 miles. So it provides the propulsion to basically boost the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite up to its final orbital destination in geosynchronous orbit.
It is a two-stage rocket system. The first stage burns, and then after it burns it separates, and then it burns a second stage, and at the end of the second stage burn the IUS second stage separates from the TDRS and then the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite provides its own navigation and its own orbital adjustments with its own propulsion system on board.
MR. MOORE: The next chart gives you a quick summary of the STS 51-L mission profile. This shows the liftoff. In the case of 51-L the liftoff occurred at 11:38 a.m. on the 28th. We go through what we call a High Q phase or a high dynamic pressure phase for the flight, and then we go through planned SRB staging, and that SRB staging is about two minutes, and this 51-L mission was planned for 128 seconds, and at that point in time we had planned to stage off the SRBs, continue with the tank on the orbiter.
Remember, the tank provides the fuel to the shuttle main engines until we achieve our orbital destination some 150 or so miles into space. The tank stays with the orbiter or is planned to stay with the orbiter on this flight for about 523 seconds, after which time it has essentially depleted itself of its fuel. We shut the engines down, and some ten to eighteen seconds later we then separate the external tank from the orbiter, and then we plan to go about our orbital profile.
That plans to give you some kind of feel for the profile. We had a six-plus day mission plan, and we had planned to land at the Kennedy Space Center on six plus a few hours, six days plus a few hours, so the day-by-day mission profile is given to you in your upper righthand portion of this vu-graph.
DR. RIDE: You might say something about the Max Q phase of the flight.
MR. MOORE: The Max Q is the maximum dynamic phase. We see that we planned in the launch profile. We go through a throttling down of the main engines during that period of time, and we are concerned about loads on the orbiter, and so we throttle our main engines down, and this particular flight had a nominal engine profile of flying at like 104 percent of rated power, where we have flown a large, large part of our flights to this date.
We throttle down during that period of time to some lower percentage, and then after we have gone through that phase of the flight, we will begin to throttle back up again and hold that throttle setting until we get to geosynchronous orbit.
We are trying to minimize the loads on the total shuttle system during the time it is seeing its maximum dynamic pressure.
DR. FEYNMAN: Was there any special extra heavy load on this particular flight higher than other flights?
MR. MOORE: We do not think so, sir. In terms of the prelaunch calculations, we get wind data prior to launch. We look at day of launch winds even an hour or so right before launch and try to get wind profiles and any kind of loads like that, and we have load indicators on the orbiter that are sensitive to different kinds of winds, whether you are getting a tailwind or a sidewind, and all of our calculations during that day had indicated that our loads condition was okay.
MR. HOTZ: Is there any change in the thrust of the solid rocket boosters when you are throttling back the main engines?
MR. MOORE: No, sir. The way the liftoff works is the shuttle main engines come on at approximately six seconds prior to what we call liftoff. We bring those engines up to their near nominal thrust level. We check those engines to make sure we have full redundancy on all the engines.
We have redundant systems on the engines, and once that check is made, a signal is sent to the solids to ignite the solids, and that happens about, as I said, about six to seven seconds after you have ignited the main engines.
Once the solids are ignited, then it lifts off the launchpad, and the solids are designed to provide stable thrusting during that period of time until they are separated, in this case 128 seconds after liftoff.
MR. HOTZ: They don't change during the entire burn?
MR. MOORE: They are not planned to be changed during the entire burn. Now, we do have a thrust cone on the back of each of the solids, and there is a little gimbaling motion in case we do get a little bit of loading effect.
We can change the gimbal on there to change the orientation of the thrust, but the planned thrust of the solids is to have a matched pair of solids, a balanced thrust during the entire flight.
MR. HOTZ: Thank you.
MR. ACHESON: Mr. Moore, at some point in the presentation today will we be briefed the test procedures, the preflight test procedures of all of the elements?
MR. MOORE: Yes, sir.
MR. ACHESON: And the contractor test procedures?
MR. MOORE: Sir, our briefing under the shuttle systems, when we begin to talk about l orbiter, we begin to talk about all of the propulsive elements of the shuttle system.
We will talk about the test procedures, the NASA people involved, the NASA structure involved, the contractors involved, and then we will talk about our design approach, our certification approach, our testing approach.
We will also talk about the entire process that we use to get ready for a shuttle launch, and how that is tiered up from flight hardware and flight software point of view until it comes up to my level at NASA Headquarters. We will give you very, very much detail on that during the course of the day.
MR. MOORE: The next chart shows some specific mission data on STS 51-L, launch data on 51-L, January 28th, 1986. The orbiter is OV-99 Challenger. And we had a planned liftoff time of 9:38. Now, we had a three-hour launch window, and for a lot of our flights we don't have the luxury of a very long time to launch in terms of meeting payload requirements.
Some launch windows are like 50 minutes, and others are like an hour and a half or two hours. This launch we had three hours to launch. The throttle setting on the main engines were 104 percent of rated power level, and we have flown many times at 104 percent, and the abort thrust setting in case we had a problem going uphill was 104 percent as well. We keep the same engine thrust. The inclination of the orbit we had planned was 28.45 degrees, and we had planned to achieve an orbital altitude of 153 and a half nautical miles circular.
DR. FEYNMAN: What is the inclination? What angle is that?
MR. MOORE: It is basically the inclination of the orbit relative to the latitude of where we are launching out of Kennedy, and it is the inclination relative to the-say, polar inclination. You are at 90 degrees. You are basically going around the earth, over the poles of the earth, and you can allow the earth to spin.
You have got an inclined orbit here like the 28 and a half degrees, and so you are not getting full coverage of the earth, so if you are plus or minus 28 and a half degrees latitude coverage in effect and your orbit is like a sine wave which walks across a still map if you were to plot continuous maps of the orbit.
One of the considerations among others that we have to do in this program is to look at our landing sites, not only for end-of-mission landing sites, which is a concern, but also abort once around, which is a condition where something could happen during the powered flight phase of the profile and not allow us to achieve a full stable orbit.
In that case, we could go once around the earth and come back. Edwards was a planned landing if we had an abort of that nature. We look at weather alternates as well.
The Kennedy Space Center has inclement weather on a fairly high frequency-witness the last launch prior to 51-L-in terms of clouds or in terms of rain, and we have very stringent rules about what landing requirements are on the system, and so we have a weather alternate.
We also have a trans-Atlantic abort capability in the event we lose an engine during a certain phase of the flight.
We have runways and people and systems on standby in places in Africa and also places in Spain where the shuttle could land if such a problem like that occurred, and in this case for Mission 51-L we had runway availability in Dakar, Senegal, and also in Casablanca, Morocco.
Both of those runways were considered viable trans-Atlantic landing sites in the event we had a problem, and we look at that on a real time basis during the preparations for launch and during the actual launch count.
We also have what we call an RTLS. Let me say before I mention this there is a whole number of abort kinds of capabilities in the system. We are not planning to go into great detail today on that, but we will be happy to provide you with additional data on kind of the abort modes in the shuttle program.
We also have one other capability called RTLS. That stands for Return to Launch Site, and that is in the event again during a certain phase of the projectory if we have a problem, we can return back to the Kennedy Space Center. After that particular problem has been noticed, and after we have separated the solids, you can come back to the Kennedy Space Center and land there.
So, a constraint for launch is that we have good weather at the shuttle landing strip at the Kennedy Space Center for some 30 to 40 minutes after a launch to make sure that we have a capability if that event occurred to land at the Kennedy Space Center.
DR. RIDE: It might be helpful to go into a little bit more of the things that you might do an RTLS for or the constraints on an RTLS.
MR. MOORE: Arnie is planning to cover that, Sally, during his discussions today about what an RTLS and what other abort modes might be, but that is a good point. We will do that. Flight duration, as I mentioned, was six days.
MR. MOORE: Now, I would like to tell you a little bit about launch date chronology leading up to our launch on the 28th, and this will give you a feel, a very preliminary feel, about the meetings that we have in terms of getting ready for a launch and who participates in that, and I am sure we will want to spend some more time on that as time goes on.
The first day we met at the Kennedy Space Center was on January 25th. Prior to that time there had been a number of meetings that a lot of the project people and even myself had participated in, talking about are we ready to launch Challenger on the 25th, at that point in time, or the 26th, I guess, was when that was scheduled, and we all agreed, so we all met at the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th of January, anticipating a launch on Sunday, and that was the 26th.
We have what we call an L-1 Day Review. Participants include myself, my senior managers, and my NASA Center people, directors, the contractor senior people, where we sit around the table and review the status of the system prior to launching. That meeting occurred at 11:00 a.m., and the major outcome of that meeting was that we had a weather problem, potential weather problem, on Sunday.
We decided at that point in time to hold a meeting Saturday afternoon or late Saturday evening, I should say, 9:30.
We met again with essentially the same type of people there, although not as large, and at that time we got our weather reports, and we decided the weather for the next day was no go. We had no optimism for the weatherman that said the rain was going to stop, or we would have an attempt to get off, and it takes an effort to get the team up, and so we decided to bet on the weatherman's forecast, and decided not to launch that day.
Well, it turns out the early part of Sunday morning for about an hour was a reasonable time. The frontal system had not reached Florida yet, and so we didn't win that call in terms of the weather, but it was a no go on Saturday night.
DR. FEYNMAN: Would you explain why we are so sensitive to the weather?
MR. MOORE: Yes, there are several reasons. I mentioned the return to the landing site. We need to have visibility if we get into a situation where we need to return to the landing site after launch, and the pilots and the commanders need to be able to see the runway and so forth. So you need a ceiling limitation on it.
We also need to maintain specifications on wind velocity so we don't exceed crosswinds. Landing on a runway and getting too high of a crosswind may cause us to deviate off of the runway and so forth, so we have a crosswind limit. During assent, assuming a nominal flight, a chief concern is damage to tiles due to rain. We have had experiences in seeing what the effects of a brief shower can do in terms of the tiles. The tiles are thermal insulation blocks, very thick. A lot of them are very thick on the bottom of the orbiter. But if you have a raindrop and you are going at a very high velocity, it tends to erode the tiles, pock the tiles, and that causes us a grave concern regarding the thermal protection.
In addition to that, you are worried about the turnaround time of the orbiters as well, because with the kind of tile damage that one could get in rain, you have an awful lot of work to do to go back and replace tiles back on the system. So there are a number of concerns that weather enters into, and it is a major factor in our assessment of whether or not we are ready to launch.